Goodbye, Love
by Beaglicious
Summary: Ten years later, his heart still ached for her. She shouldn’t affect him like this, but she did. She always would. Spoilers for 6x24, Way to Go. Sandles.


**Goodbye, Love**

**Disclaimer: Neither CSI nor Casablanca is mine. Bear's Ridge Hotel and the AACF are figments of my imagination only…I hope.  
A/N: Inspired by the song "These Days," as sung by Rascal Flatts.  
Summary: Ten years later, his heart still ached for her. She shouldn't affect him like this, but she did. She always would. Sandles angst secondary to GSR. Contains spoilers for 6x24, "Way to Go."**

**Many thanks to Jenny70529 for the awesome beta and encouragement. **

_Denver, Colorado  
Bear's Ridge Hotel and Conference Center  
Annual meeting of the American Academy of Criminal Forensics, 2016_

He'd expected to see her, to see _them_, and yet it still hit him like a ton of bricks when they walked into the room. Ten years ago, they'd all been teammates on the nightshift of Las Vegas' crime lab. Ten years later, _they_ were married and he'd moved back to San Francisco to escape the pain. He still loved her as much now as he did then.

He didn't feel the slightest bit bad for extending the passionate hug she offered him a few seconds longer than was polite, even if _he_ was standing there. He inhaled the smell of her shampoo, the smell of her body wash, the very essence of her, letting go only when he was sure his heart would burst if he didn't.

He looked _him_ straight in the eye as he shook his hand. Time had been kind to them both, but love had transformed her She was radiant, glowing, vibrant. Time and heartache had dulled his own personality, but he still mustered up a goofy grin for them both. For _her_. She tousled his hair and smiled back.

"What have you been up to?" she asked.

"Just the usual," he shrugged. _I get up. I go to work. I try not to think about how much I miss you – how much I miss us. I come home to my empty apartment and watch Casablanca and other sad movies. I go to bed and wake up dreaming about you. _

"Are you seeing anyone?"

_Don't start this, Sara. Please - not now, not here. Not in front of _him.

"There's only one girl for me," he whispered hotly, taking advantage of the fact that _his _attention was elsewhere.

She at least had the decency to look ashamed.

_He _refocused his attention on Sara, placing his hand casually on her lower back.

_Does it send shivers up your back when he does that? Does he appreciate the beauty that is your back, and worship it by dragging his tongue up your spine so that you shiver with pleasure?_

Sara forced one last smile out, then said, "We – we should go register."

"I guess you better. The first seminar starts in ten minutes. You wouldn't want to miss it."

_Yeah, right. Fiber analysis. Woop-tee-do._

"You are coming to hear Gil speak, aren't you?"

"I wouldn't miss it," he answered.

"Good," she said. "We can sit together."

_Right. The last time _we_ sat together during a seminar, _we_ snuck out halfway through and raced back to your room for some, ah, personal analysis. Three days later Brass got shot, and a week later you slept with Grissom and then dumped me._

The pained look on Sara's face revealed that she was recalling the same memory.

"Tomorrow at ten, right Gris?" he asked, sparing her the discomfort.

"That's right, Greg. Of course, it's nothing you don't already know."

"I learn something new from you every time."

_Like the fact that you have no qualms about stealing my girlfriend._

Sara stared at her toes until _he _lead her away. Greg sighed and closed his eyes. His heart was pounding, and his eyes were threatening to water up. Ten years later, his heart still ached for her. She shouldn't affect him like this, but she did. She always would.

The next morning, his phone rang. He rolled over in the strange hotel bed, wondering briefly where he was, yet thankful that wherever it was, it didn't remind him of Sara.

_Oops. Too late._

He picked up the phone and slid it beneath the covers to the warm cove he'd created for himself. "Hello?" he grumbled.

"Greg?" Her soft voice melted him, and he was instantly awake. He sat up in bed, then snuggled back down under the comforter. It wasn't quite the pillow talk he was looking for, but it would do.

"Yes?"

"It's Sara."

"I know."

"Are you still coming to Gil's lecture?"

_So much for the pillow talk._

"Yes."

"Um, okay. Well, Gil's already gone downstairs to prepare. I thought maybe we could grab some breakfast first?"

"What time is it?"

"8:30."

Greg groaned and rolled over in bed. "Give me half an hour and I'll meet you downstairs."

_Give me half a lifetime and I still won't be over you._

"Okay. See you then. Bye."

She hung up before he could respond. Greg poked his head out from underneath the covers and squinted at the clock. Getting up shouldn't be this hard. After all, since moving to Frisco eight years ago, he'd been on day shift. Maybe the fact that he hadn't gone to sleep until nearly 4 am had something to do with it. Or the fact that it was the first time he'd seen Sara since leaving Vegas. Most likely, the latter had resulted in the former.

Greg pulled himself out of bed and into the shower.

"_Greg, what are you doing?"_

_Greg had slipped in the shower behind Sara, wrapping his arms around her._

"_Taking a shower."_

"_Can't you wait until I'm done?"_

"_Sorry, I didn't see you." Greg pulled the soapy loofah out of Sara's hand and began wiping it in broad circles over her back. He lifted her hair up off her neck and kissed it._

"_You're impossible."_

"_And you can't reach your back."_

"_Can too." Sara snatched the loofah out of his hand and proceeded to prove to him that she could, in fact, scrub her own back._

"_Well, I can't reach mine."_

_Sara turned around to face Greg, a wicked grin on her face. She dropped a quick kiss on his lips, then turned him around so that his back was to her. She started with his shoulders and moved slowly down his back. At his waist, she quickly dropped the loofah and reached around front to take him in her hands, eliciting a sharp gasp from Greg as his knees nearly buckled. Sara shifted her feet, bracing herself as Greg leaned back into her._

_He tried to protest, his voice unusually raspy. "Sara -"_

_She silenced him with a sharp bite to his left shoulder._

_His second protest was weaker, but the resulting bite from Sara was no less sharp._

"_You invade my shower; I get to call the shots. Let me take care of you, Greg. We'll worry about me later."_

_The only sign of Greg's surrender was a soft sigh as he shut his eyes._

Greg ran the towel through his hair, smiling at the wayward spikes that resulted. At 41, he still gelled his locks. Looking a lot younger than his forty-one years helped, as did the fact that nearly everyone in Cali also gelled their hair.

Twenty minutes after her call, Greg stepped out of the elevator into the lobby. Sara was already there, sitting in a chair with her legs crossed and gnawing nervously on her thumbnail.

"Hey," he said.

"Hey." She stood up and gave him a hug. Unlike the previous day, Greg kept it short.

"You look great," he said. "I didn't have a chance to tell you that yesterday, but you do."

"Thanks." Sara ran her hand through her hair nervously. "They told me at the desk that there's a diner not to far from here. Is that ok with you?"

"Sure."

The two walked easily down the street, reverting quickly to lab talk. Sara caught Greg up on all the drama in Vegas, and Greg told her all about his job at the Frisco Crime Lab.

"I made CSI level III a few years back."

"Greg, that's great! Why didn't you call and tell me?"

"After five years of being gone, I didn't know where to begin. But I thought of you. I wouldn't have made it if you hadn't taken me under your wing."

"You already had the skills, Greg. I just showed you how to use them."

They drifted into silence then, until Sara pointed out the diner. After the waitress got them settled and took their orders for coffee, Greg spoke again.

"Are you still a vegetarian?"

"Yeah. You know, Gil and I…" She paused, and looked at Greg. He smiled.

"It's okay, Sara. You can talk about him. He is your husband, after all."

Sara gave him a weak smile. "Gil and I had to do another pig experiment a few years ago. It was just as disgusting the second time around."

The waitress returned to take their orders. When Greg ordered a veggie omelet, Sara's heart lurched.

"You didn't have to do that," she told him when the waitress left.

"I don't mind," he said, shrugging it off. "One meal without meat isn't going to kill me."

"Thanks," she whispered, suddenly very interested in the napkin in her lap.

_They'd been dating for nearly two weeks before Sara noticed._

"_Why do you keep ordering vegetarian meals, Greg?" she demanded one morning after shift._

"_Because of you," he replied simply._

"_Greg, it doesn't bother me that other people eat meat. You don't have to do this."_

"_I know," he said. "But I respect your decision. And it's the least I can do. Don't think I don't notice the way you crinkle your nose up when the waitress brings out Nick's bacon."_

_He hadn't touched meat for the six months they'd been together. Even after she'd dumped him for Grissom, he'd kept it up, thinking that if he didn't eat any meat, then maybe she'd come back to him. The day after she and Grissom had married, Nick and Greg had gone to a bar, where Greg attempted, unsuccessfully, to drown his sorrows in beer, washing them down with a huge burger as well, all over Nick's protests. Not two hours later, he was in the bathroom, vomiting it all up._

_He'd stayed away from meat after that, more wary of his stomach than anything else. When he moved to Frisco a few months later, he gradually introduced meat back into his diet. But still, on days when the hurt was particularly bad, he'd find himself in a diner, staring at a veggie burger through teary eyes._

"Sara, I need to apologize to you."

"Why?"

"For the way I left Vegas. You were so happy, and I'm sorry that I took my anger out on you."

"You didn't take it out on me, Greg."

"Yes I did."

"I never noticed anything."

"Well, I still owe you an apology. I know our last conversation wasn't exactly cordial."

_Two years after they'd started dating, Grissom and Sara had married. When they'd announced their engagement six months earlier, Greg had begun his plan to move to Frisco. To spare Sara's feelings, he waited for a few months after their wedding. He didn't want Sara, or other members of the team, blaming her for his departure._

_It was during his last shift that Sara had cornered him in the locker room._

"_You have a lot of nerve springing this on us at the last moment."_

"_I'm sorry, Sara."_

"_Have you apologized to Warrick? Nick? Catherine? Hodges? Brass? Archie? Doc Robbins?" Her voice rose in pitch with each subsequent name. " I'm not the only one who's going to miss you"_

"_I'll apologize to them all, I swear. I'm going to miss you guys too, you know."_

"_Then why are you taking this job? You certainly aren't acting like you want to go."_

"_It's a great opportunity, Sara. Assistant supervisor for swing? Frisco may not be Vegas, but it's not all bad."_

"_You're not going for the job."_

"_Sara, why are you pressing the issue? I'm going, period. Don't make this harder for me."_

_Sara's eyes widened as understanding dawned on her face. "You're leaving because of me, aren't you? Because of what happened between us?"_

"_There is no us, Sara. There's been no us for a long time. I'm not sure I even believe that there was an us. I was just a pit stop on the way to Grissom."_

_Sara's eyes flared in anger. "Screw you, Greg Sanders," she hissed before stalking out of the locker room._

"You had a right to be angry, Greg."

"Not for that long, I didn't. I only wanted your happiness. I just didn't plan on it hurting me so bad."

"I'm sorry I hurt you."

"Don't apologize."

Sara's anger soared. "So you can apologize, but I can't? What kind of screwed up logic is that? You lied to me, you know. There was no assistant supervisor position for the swing shift."

"I know. I'm sorry."

"I should have figured it out when you left. There's no way they would have given that position to a level I CSI."

"Who told you?"

"I still have friends up there, Greg."

"Like who?"

"Like Leslie Adams."

_Nice going, Sanders. Your first date post-Sara would be with one of her old friends._

"I never told her we dated, Greg."

"Thank you."

"I didn't have to. You guys went out what, two times? She said it was obvious from the beginning that you were in love with someone else."

"I didn't mean to hurt her."

"You didn't," she said. "Leslie's tough. She was a little bummed about it though. She thought you would have been fun."

"I was bummed too. But it wasn't fair to her." Greg stared at his plate until Sara spoke a few moments later.

"Greg, how many girlfriends have you had since moving to Frisco?"

Somehow, he managed to meet her eyes. "I told you, Sara. There's only one girl for me."

She faltered. "But surely, there's been someone…"

He shook his head. "I couldn't break someone's heart just because mine has been broken."

Sara reached across the table and squeezed his hand. "Greg…"

"Sara, it's not your fault."

"Yes it is."

"Sara, no it's not. You can't help who you love anymore than I can. I knew going into it that Grissom was the one for you, always had been and always would be, just as I knew that you were the one for me. I tried to fool myself for a while that you might love me too, but eventually I realized that I should just be thankful for the time we had together. It's not your fault that you couldn't love me."

_If only I could have heard you say those words, just once. Maybe it's better that you never did. If you had, it would have made losing you that much worse._

"Greg…" Sara was close to tears.

"Sara, I told you, it's okay." Sara looked away, dabbing at her eyes. Greg stared at his half-eaten omelet and sighed.

"I wanted to love you," she finally said.

"I know you did," he said. "But even if we'd never been together, I still would have loved you, still would love you, just the same. Those six months" – his voice cracked – "were just a bonus."

"I feel terrible."

"Why? Sara, I made my peace with that situation a long time ago. You had the opportunity to be with Grissom, your one true love, and you took it. I would have done the exact same thing."

Tears began to fall down Sara's face. "No you wouldn't. You would have never cheated on someone just to be with the one person you love."

"Sara, as sure as I'm sitting here, I promise you that it wouldn't matter who I was with. If I had the chance to be with you, I'd take it."

Sara didn't believe him, but the tone of his voice told her not to push it. He'd forgiven her, and he expected her to forgive herself as well.

They returned to their meals, but neither had much appetite.

"I never told Grissom about us."

_So much for my theory that Grissom has no qualms about stealing girlfriends._

"Why not?"

"Why would I? You still worked at the lab. I didn't know how he would react, and I didn't think it would be fair to you. By the time you left, it was too late to tell him without it seeming like I was hiding something."

"Well, I was planning on mentioning it during his Q&A session today." Greg smiled, and flicked a piece of toast at Sara, who laughed.

"Speaking of which," he said, "Let's get out of here. Don't want to keep the bug man waiting."

Greg paid for Sara's meal over her vocal protests, resorting at one point to pinning her hands down on the countertop with his. Their natural light banter that had disappeared on that dark night a decade ago was returning. Greg found himself actually smiling.

_You were just given an entire morning to be with her, alone. Given the circumstances, could you ask for much more?_

They made their way to the room where Grissom's lecture would be held, snagging two front row seats.

"This way you can't con me into sneaking out again," Greg teased.

Sara looked over at him, mortified. "Greg…"

"Sara, please. All I want to do is make you laugh again. We can't change the past, but we can enjoy what we have right now. When I was just your friend you used to laugh at my jokes all the time."

Sara gave him one last funny look, then laughed.

"As I recall," she whispered, "It was_ your_ idea to leave."

Greg laughed back, not caring how ridiculous they might look to the rest of the room. He was with Sara, and she was laughing. Because of him. Grissom crossed over the stage, heard the laughter and looked up to see the two of them. His frown only served to make them laugh harder.

"Oh that was great," Greg said, when they finally stopped laughing to catch their breath. "Did you see his face? It was just like all the times we used to cut up before assignments. I swear, sometimes I thought his head was going to blow just like a volcano."

Sara wiped at her eyes, then grew quiet. Greg knew she was replaying their conversation from earlier that morning in her head. As much as he desperately wanted to tell her to forget about it, he knew it would take her hashing it out in her own time.

"It's just not fair," she said suddenly.

"What?"

"The fact that I am the one to two different people. That can't be right. Mathematically, it's impossible. It completely refutes the idea of there even being a one to begin with."

"Life's not fair."

"But it should be fair to you, Greg," she insisted. "You deserve someone to love, someone to make smile."

"But I do have someone to love" he said, staring her in the eye. "And I can make her smile, even when no one else can."

Sara started to cry again.

"Sara, please stop," he begged. "Look, I know to a physicist it doesn't make sense, but let me explain it to you from a geneticist's point of view."

"This ought to be good."

"Okay, you have five bases that make up our genetic code, right? Adenine, guanine, cytosine, thymine and uracil."

"Right."

"And guanine can only pair with cytosine, right?"

"Yeah…"

"So, in a sense, you could say that cytosine is the one for guanine, and vice-versa?"

"Greg…"

"But it gets a little trickier with the other three, right? Because in DNA strands, adenine pairs with thymine. But in RNA, adenine pairs with uracil. So while the only one for uracil and thymine is adenine, adenine has two options. And while they both work well together, we all know that the adenine-uracil pairing is temporary until adenine can pair up with thymine. But even though it's temporary, you can't convince uracil to pair with anything else."

"We're not DNA, Greg."

"That's the only way I know how to explain it, Sara. And yes, technically, we are."

"I wish it didn't have to be like this."

"Let me ask you a question. Are you happy with him?"

"Yes."

"Really? Are you really in love with him?"

"Greg…don't make me do this."

"Just answer me, please. My sanity depends on it."

"Then…yes."

"Then this is how it's supposed to be."

Their conversation was cut off by the lights dimming. Grissom appeared at the podium and wasted no time introducing the audience to forensic entomology. During the presentation, Greg would occasionally glance over at Sara, watching her watch Grissom. There was the hint of a smile on her face, and even in the dark, her eyes shone with love.

_This is how it's supposed to be._

Two days later, the conference was winding down. Greg sat with Grissom and Sara during the last presentation, and when it was over, he bit back his tears to tell them good-bye.

"_Greg, I need to tell you something."_

_Sara was standing on his doorstep. The intense heat was curling her hair, and there was a bead of sweat running down the side of her face. Greg never thought she'd looked more beautiful._

_He opened the door and beckoned her to enter, out of the heat and into his arms, but she shook her head no._

"_I can't stay." She sniffed then, and Greg realized that the moisture on her face wasn't sweat, but tears._

"_I – this – us – it's not going to work."_

_Greg's heart snapped. The time had finally come. They were over. _

"_Grissom?" he asked, and Sara nodded._

"_Okay."_

"_Okay? That's all you have to say?" Anger sprung into her voice._

"_What do you want me to say, Sara? That I hate you? I could never hate you. I love you with every ounce of my being."_

"_Greg, don't…"  
_

"_It's true, Sara. I love you. I always have loved you. I always will love you. Just like you love Grissom."_

"_I'm sorry."_

"_So am I."_

"_I – I should go." She took off then, bolting from his door like a racehorse from the gate. Greg softly closed his door. At that point, he gave into his anger, and kicked at the door until he felt something snap and realized it was his big toe. The blinding pain cut through his rage, and he hobbled to his couch, collapsing into the worn cushions that still smelled of her and burst into tears._

Sara hugged him goodbye, and Greg pushed his luck a second time by holding her for as long as she would let him.

"Think you'll ever make it down to Vegas again?" she whispered into his ear.

"Probably not," he whispered back, closing his eyes to fight the tears that threatened to flow.

"I don't want this to be good-bye," she mumbled, resting her head against his shoulder and squeezing her eyes shut.

"You know it has to be."

"I wish you would hate me."

"I don't."

She pulled away then, wiping her eyes desperately.

"Here," he whispered, handing her a tissue.

She took the tissue, and smiled at him through eyelashes damp with tears.

"Sara, are you ready to go?" _He_ was back, ready to take her away.

"Just a minute, Gil."

"Go," Greg whispered to her, their bodies still too close and his still too full with love for her. "Before I do something stupid."

She cupped his face in her hand, rubbing the pad of her thumb across his cheekbone, a forever unasked and unanswered question in her eye.

"Good-bye, Greg," she whispered, and then she was gone, walking over to _him_ with her long strides, her face down.

Greg watched them walk away. Her hand was wrapped in _his, _and _he _leaned over to kiss her temple. On her free hand, a small diamond glittered under the lights. She was gone, but the memory of her would remain with him forever.

_Fin_

**Love is always bestowed as a gift,  
freely, willingly, and without expectation.  
We don't love to be loved; we love to love.  
- Leo Buscaglia**


End file.
